She is a National Book Award finalist with novels and poetry published by giant and small publishers, but it’s as Donald Fagen’s muse that Rikki Ducornet’s name is on everyone’s lips.

Now writing and painting in Port Townsend, she doesn’t complain when asked to tell, again and again, how she became the “Rikki” of pop radio fame in the summer of 1974. The song was pretty much inescapable at the time as Steely Dan’s third studio album, “Pretzel Logic,” peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100.

But Ducornet was unaware of its existence. She and her then-husband were living and working in isolation in a small French village, she said. She first learned of the song after returning to Massachusetts from France in the mid-1970s. “I had just arrived and walked into the record store and heard that song,” Ducornet said. “I recognized Fagen’s voice immediately and heard my name. I thought, ‘Wow, that is amazing.’”

Turns out Fagen actually gave Ducornet his number, she said. Both had attended Bard College, but she did not know him well. “We were just intrigued by one another.”

Fagen, in a 1985 interview with “Musician” magazine, said Rikki was a woman he’d had a crush on in college. The song was therefore an ode to the one that got away.

Ducornet appreciated Fagen’s music.

“I went to all their shows,” she said. “They were performing at a place called the Red Barn and they were spectacular. Fagen was spectacular. You could tell the energy was absolutely extraordinary and wildly powerful.”

The one member of the group who did not stand out to Ducornet was Chevy Chase, she said, who was the drummer for the band at that time. “I wasn’t impressed by Chevy’s drumming.”

For many years, the song followed Ducornet around, popping up in random places. To her, the song is a zen koan, or puzzle, she said.

“Don’t lose that number was like don’t lose yourself. The funny thing is, there was a period where I couldn’t go to an airport or into a sushi restaurant without hearing that song. Often it would happen at moments of feeling really lost, like I was losing my way.”

It was in her art, Ducornet said, where she would find herself.

Transdisciplinary artist

Ducornet said her work is animated by an interest in nature, Eros, abusive authority, subversion and the transcendent capacities of the creative imagination.

“I have been haunted by the problem of evil all my life, which means I am engaged in politics. I am really interested in the abuse of authority. So I have dealt with the holocaust, the inquisition and facsism. I have been wanting always to find ways to make that engaging.”

Ducornet’s novels are published in over a dozen languages, and her paintings exhibited internationally, including most recently in conjunction with “Wounded Galaxies” at the University of Indiana in 2018, at the Dox Centre for Contemporary Art: “I Welcome,” exhibit for Amnesty International in Prague in 2018 and at the National Library of Costa Rica in 2016.

​Ducornet has authored nine novels, collections of essays, short fiction and poetry. Her work has received The Bard College Arts and Letters Award, The Lannan Literary Award for Fiction and an Academy Award in Literature.

Her 1993 novel, “The Jade Cabinet,” was a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also been a tenured Writer in Residence at both Denver University and the University of Louisiana, a Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University, St. Louis, and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Trento, Italy.

In Port Townsend, woodcarver Suzzanne Stangel and a slew of other artists consider Ducornet a great mentor and muse.

“Rikki is an incredibly imaginative artist and writer,” Stangel said. “Her art is sensual and otherworldly. She is endlessly encouraging when it comes to artists.”

While Ducornet has certainly made a name for herself, accolades are not what drive her, she said.

“I never got involved either as a painter or as a writer because I wanted to be famous. It was something I really saw as a profound delight and a journey into the self.”

If creativity is given space and time to grow, the resulting impulse is powerful and has a way of pouncing to life, Ducornet said.

Understanding the self

Writing, in particular, has not only been an adventure but has helped Ducornet find her place in the world, she said.

“It is a kind of self-awareness and a place to think,” she said. “I felt like I really was learning to think when I was writing because my thoughts were on the page and I could see in black and white in front of me when I was being lazy or when I was contradicting myself or when I perhaps had to figure things out that were ethical issues.”

Writing also helped illuminate the choices Ducornet faces in her life, she said.

“Do I take the road well-trodden because it is easier, or do I find a new way? I again and again made the choice to find a new way.”

But forging a new path is not always the best way to draft a best seller, she said.“I want to write a book that Kafka would enjoy. That is an enormous demand to make on one’s self, but there is so much demand out there and I don’t want to do this unless I do something that is really good and new.”

With her first novel, “The Stain,” Ducornet found a receptive audience in England.

“That book was embraced in London immediately,” she said. “It got an enormous amount of attention. I was very lucky. I had the right readers.”

In other words, eccentric, she said.

Ducornet’s eccentric nature - her house is decorated with art from around the world and she delights in Turkish coffee - was fostered from a young age.

Her mother was very artistic, she said, and helped Ducornet grow her imagination.

“I think in fact every child is wired to be an artist. The creative imagination is absolutely essential, not only for our delight in the world but our survival, because it’s a place of intuition, experiment, fearlessness, playfulness, discovery and curiosity.”

Ducornet passed along the creative spark to her son, Jean-Yves Ducornet, who wrote and arranged “Hoy Es Adios,” a song recorded by Santana in 2002.

Ducornet worries modern American culture has great disdain for the imagination, she said, and perhaps even fears it because it can be a destination for acute subversion.

“It is a place where we can invent the world again and again and confront the things that are not working for us - perhaps getting in our way, reducing us and making us unhappy.”

Having taught both creative writing and painting, Ducornet said she has encountered a recurring phenomenon.

“Very talented people often are blocked because of what they have been told as children, that somehow this is narcissistic or a waste of time and even anti-social.”

That may come with the territory, since creative work is something one does in privacy, Ducornet said. “Very often we do need to close the door.”

Such an act does not come from a place of anger or rejection, but is instead part of the voyage, Ducornet said.

“It is a real adventure of the self.”

Rigor and imagination

Writing a novel takes a liberal amount of rigor and imagination, Ducornet said.

“You need to be wildly imaginative and daring and fearless. But you’ve got to be rigorous.”

That includes both pushing the envelope of what can be accomplished and learning to self-edit, she said.

“You have to learn to go over and through it again and again until it is just the way it should be. You have to take out everything that is boring. It has got to keep sparking.”

The best way to start is with no buildup, Ducornet said.

“What if it starts on fire and you keep that fire burning? Then the demands are enormous. You have upped your ante and have to keep being hot.”

While a challenge, the process is thrilling, Ducornet said.

“Why do it if you are bored? Why do that to yourself? Life is too short.”

That approach may not appeal to all readers, but that isn’t the point, Ducornet said.

“I figure if the book is good enough it will find its readers. I have never thought of softening things for people. But, I have realized there are ways of writing that will engage a reader so they will trust you and stay with you.”

One pathway to such success is through the use of black humor, Ducornet said.

“The writing quickens so you are taken, somehow, by this buoyancy that is all in the language so you can handle listening to the voice of a French Nazi.”

So, did Rikki lose that number?

Back to the question at hand, Ducornet gave the scoop on what she did with Fagen’s number.

“I was married and pregnant with my son,” she said. “I lost it. I behaved myself.”

For more about Ducornet’s works, visit

rikkiducornet.com